Thanks to Donna Jordan Orr who has become a member of CHAPS and gotten involved in research by scanning this article from More Big Hill Country on Irene and Clarence Copithorne. Clarence was the youngest son of Richard and Sophia Georgina (Wills) Copithorne and was born on November 12, 1920 in the little brick hospital … Read more
Richard was a man who liked horses and when the First World War broke out there were about three hundred Clydesdale horses on the ranch. A horse in those days never had a rope on him until he was four years old. A hurry-up call for horses for the cavalry made a considerable lot of work. It was often marvelled at how these wild horses tamed down when taken off their home range and put in a military camp.
by Belle and Allan Hall Clarence Copithorne was the youngest son of Richard and Sophia Copithorne. Clarence was born in the little brick hospital in Cochrane on Nov. 12, 1920. He received some education at the Little Jumping Pound School, then attending Olds Agricultural School for three years, graduating with a diploma in agriculture. Clarence’s … Read more
I have watched Cochrane grow into the large town it is today, and I am sure it will retain a great deal of its character through the many changes.
During the 1930’s the government was paying men $5.00 per month to work on farms and ranches and paid farmers $5.00 per month towards room and board. This was the first so-called “government assistance” Grandpa ever got.
Clara Jeanette and John Johann Mjolsness had raised eleven children in Minnesota when talk began of some of their boys coming to Alberta to take advantage of the homesteads being made available to encourage settlement.
Good polo players are a cross between a jockey, a dressage rider, and a cowboy. While playing a few practice chukkers with Will Rogers Junior at Will Rogers State Park in the Pacific Palisades, California, Don observed the rustic fireplace in the late Will Rogers’s ranch house and patterned ours after it.
The school was heated with wood in a round barrel stove, light at night came from a coal oil lamp and the teacher lived with the family of one of the students while being paid the handsome sum of $600 for the year.
As teenagers, Norman and his brothers Ollie and Wilbert joined Sykes Robinson and other boys of the district to develop their rodeo skills on the neighbour’s steers, horses or even milk cows. The furious owners occasionally caught them snubbing-up an otherwise tame wheel horse.
Our bus driver was Mr. Eddie Rowe. He liked his chewing tobacco and carried a spittoon on the bus, which he never seemed to hit.
